UK government suppressed evidence on Binyam Mohamed torture because MI6 helped his interrogators

The Government suppressed evidence on the torture of terror suspect Binyam
Mohamed because the documents reveal that MI6 helped his interrogators.

By Tim Shipman in Washington and Melissa Kite, Political Correspondent

8:01PM GMT 07 Feb 2009

Material in a CIA dossier on Mr Mohamed that was blacked out by High Court judges contained details of how British intelligence officers supplied information to his captors and contributed questions while he was brutally tortured, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.

Intelligence sources have revealed that spy chiefs put pressure on Mr Miliband to do nothing that would leave serving MI6 officers open to prosecution, or to jeopardise relations with the CIA, which is passing them "top notch" information on British terrorist suspects from its own informers in Britain.

Mr Mohamed, 30, an Ethiopian, was granted refugee status in Britain in 1994. He was picked up in Pakistan in 2002 on suspicion of involvement in terrorism, rendered to Morocco and Afghanistan, tortured and then sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2004. All terror charges against him were dropped last year.

Two High Court judges last week said they wanted to release the full contents of a CIA file on his treatment but they held back seven paragraphs of information after David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, argued that it could compromise intelligence sharing with the US.

A British official, who is regularly briefed on intelligence operations, said: "The concern was that the document revealed that intelligence from the British agencies was used by the Americans and that there were British questions asked while Binyam Mohamed was being tortured.

"Miliband is being pushed hard by the intelligence agencies to protect the identity of those involved."

The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed's genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, "is very far down the list of things they did," the official said.

Another source familiar with the case said: "British intelligence officers knew about the torture and didn't do anything about it. They supplied information to the Americans and the Moroccans. They supplied questions, they supplied photographs. There is evidence of all of that."

David Davis, the former shadow home secretary who first highlighted the case, said: "What has become clear is that the information being held back is not protecting the American government who have made a clean breast of their involvement in torture, but the British government, where at least two cabinet ministers have denied any complicity whatsoever.

"It is very clear who stands to be embarrassed by this and who is being protected by this secrecy. It is not the Americans, it is Labour ministers."

The full document on Mr Mohamed could still be released. President Barack Obama is under pressure from the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee to release the unedited report.

A source on the committee described the case as "shocking" and told The Sunday Telegraph: "If the President doesn't act we could hold a hearing or write to subpoena the documents. We need to know what's in those documents."

The Attorney General, Baroness Scotland, is now considering whether British intelligence officers can be charged in the UK. Her office says the matter is still under review.

Clive Stafford-Smith, Mr Mohamed's lawyer, offered to supply the Attorney General with his files of evidence in December, but he has heard nothing back. He condemned the government's attitude to the documents as "an attempt to define as classified that which is merely political embarrassing".

He expects Mr Mohamed, who is currently on hunger strike, finally to be sent home from Guantanamo this week.

Despite the criticism of the government's stance, intelligence sources have revealed that there was a second, legitimate, reason for doing as the US government asked in restricting the material published: MI5 is more dependent than ever on the CIA for help in monitoring the 2,000 terrorist suspects in the UK.

The CIA is now running a large network of its own informers in the British Pakistani community. Their information has helped thwart terrorist attacks in the UK and locate senior al-Qaeda operatives abroad.

The US has stepped up intelligence gathering in the UK to such an extent over the last 18 months that one in four CIA operations designed to prevent a repeat of the 9/11 attacks on the US homeland is now conducted against targets in the UK.